{"id":1188,"date":"2008-10-24T01:00:37","date_gmt":"2008-10-24T09:00:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/?p=1188"},"modified":"2010-02-05T16:56:24","modified_gmt":"2010-02-06T00:56:24","slug":"not-ashamed-of-the-gospel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/2008\/10\/24\/not-ashamed-of-the-gospel\/","title":{"rendered":"Not Ashamed of the Gospel"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Pastor Patrick Cho<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear friends and family of LBC,<\/p>\n

I have had the opportunity to meet with some of our college students recently as we talked about having a biblical, God-centered understanding of the gospel. This stemmed from our conversation a few weeks ago about building a biblical philosophy of ministry (or really, \u201cphilosophy of life\u201d). The progression went as follows: 1) We believe that the Bible is God\u2019s inspired, and therefore inerrant, revelation to man; 2) Because the Bible has a divine author, we believe that it is authoritative and sufficient to deal with any issue pertaining to life and godliness; 3) Because the Bible is the only authoritative revelation given to men by God, all that we do and understand must be governed by and filtered through biblical principles; 4) This is because the Bible is completely trustworthy and God\u2019s truth is unchanging, so that even if times change and culture changes, God\u2019s Word abides forever.<\/p>\n

Built upon these premises came our discussion of the gospel. This is a critical topic for study because the church today grossly redefines and changes the gospel message. The concern is that since the biblical message contains elements that are too offensive to people, those elements should be either dumbed down or eliminated. So you see many believers sharing the gospel with others without ever bringing up God\u2019s righteousness, man\u2019s sin, or God\u2019s judgment. Some do not even mention the cross, simply saying that Jesus \u201ccame for you,\u201d but not indicating what He did or why it was even necessary.<\/p>\n

I hope you discern the problem with this. This is the primary reason why so many in the church hold on to a shallow profession of faith that does not save. On top of that, it neglects the fact that the gospel has been handed down to us through divine revelation. It is not something that God has left to us to redefine. Had He wanted the gospel to be man-centered, God would have revealed it to us that way. Preaching the gospel in a way that Scripture does not teach does not just indicate a faulty view towards evangelism. It also reveals a faulty view of Scripture itself. As believers, like the Apostle Paul, we must not be ashamed of the gospel of Christ because it is the power of God for salvation to everyone who believes, to the Jew first and also to the Greek (Rom. 1:16). It is our responsibility as God\u2019s ambassadors and representatives to proclaim His message His way, and to trust that through that, and that alone, will He work to save souls.<\/p>\n

In His grace,
\nPastor Patrick<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Pastor Patrick Cho Dear friends and family of LBC, I have had the opportunity to meet with some of our college students recently as we talked about having a biblical, God-centered understanding of the gospel. This stemmed from our conversation a few weeks ago about building a biblical philosophy of ministry (or really, \u201cphilosophy […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-lighthouse-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/469"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1189,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1188\/revisions\/1189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lighthousebc.com\/beacon\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}